Random Asian Countries

How this Asian country picker works

One click and you get a country in Asia. That is what you came for and the button is right there.

Press Generate and your browser picks at random. Nothing leaves your machine. Turn up the Number box for several at once, no repeats, and Copy takes them.

The three filters trim before the pick happens:

• Starts with: a single letter, matched against the first character of the name.
• Contains: a few letters, matched anywhere inside the name.
• Ends with: a single letter, matched against the last character.

Now, the interesting part. If you have ever wondered why one website says Asia has 48 countries and the next says 49 or 50, the answer is the most interesting thing on this page.

Asia is the only continent with no edge

Think about how you would know if a country is in Africa. Look at the coastline. Africa is surrounded by water on every side except a narrow strip at Suez. Same with Australia. Same with the Americas.

Asia has no such luck. Its western side runs straight into Europe across an unbroken plain, and there is nothing there. No sea, no strait, no mountain wall running the whole way. Geologists will tell you Europe and Asia are one landmass on one tectonic plate, and they are right.

So the border had to be invented. It runs down the Ural Mountains, along the Ural River to the Caspian Sea, then across to the Black Sea by way of the Caucasus. The line was proposed in the eighteenth century by a Swedish officer and geographer, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, who had been a prisoner of war in Siberia and had the time to think about it.

Every part of that line was chosen by somebody. None of it is a natural boundary in any sense a geologist would accept.

Which means Asia does not have a fixed number of countries. It has a number that depends on where you decide the line goes.

Six countries sit in Europe and Asia at once

These six are transcontinental, and every one of them appears on somebody's list of European countries and somebody else's list of Asian ones.

• Turkey. Istanbul is split down the middle by the Bosphorus. The eastern half of the city is in Asia and the western half is in Europe, and you can take a ferry between them in twenty minutes.
• Kazakhstan. The Ural River runs through it, so the line passes straight across the country.
• Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. All three sit in the Caucasus, which is where the boundary is usually drawn. Whether you place them north or south of it decides which continent they are in.
• Cyprus. An island in the eastern Mediterranean, far closer to the Syrian coast than to the Greek mainland, and a member of the European Union.

None of the six is a puzzle to be solved. A reasonable person could file each one either way, and reasonable people do.

If you are running a quiz, this is the thing to be careful about. Ask "name a country in Asia" and someone says Turkey, and someone else at the table will object. Both of them are right.

Russia and Egypt each span two continents

Two more countries, two different conventions, and neither convention is the one people expect.

Russia is conventionally filed under Europe. Which looks odd, because most of Russia's land lies east of the Ural Mountains, and most of Russia is therefore in Asia. But almost all of its people, and its capital, and its history, are on the western side of the line, and convention follows the population rather than the acreage.

Egypt is conventionally filed under Africa. And yet the Sinai Peninsula, which is Egyptian, sits on the Asian side of the Suez Canal. Egypt is a country on two continents with a canal running between them, and everybody agrees to call it African.

Two countries, two continents each, two different filing decisions, neither of them wrong. This is what "no edge" means in practice.

Why nobody agrees how many countries Asia has

You will see 48. You will see 49, 50 and 51.

Nobody is lying to you. They have made a different call on the six transcontinental countries, or added Russia, or added Egypt, or counted a territory that has no government of its own. Every one of those decisions is defensible and none of them is neutral.

So the honest answer to "how many countries are in Asia" is not a number. It is a question back: where do you want the line, and does Russia count?

Asia is the largest continent and the most populous. It holds the highest mountains, the lowest land, the oldest cities and the newest countries. Bhutan, Cambodia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Oman, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, and that is barely a fifth of it.

A list of names is a poor way to hold all that. Pulling one out at random is a better one.

Ways people actually use this

• Geography lessons. Ask a class to name countries in Asia and you will get China, Japan, India and then silence. Generate five and the silence stops.
• Quiz rounds. Pull one and ask for the capital, the currency, and one border. Three questions from one click.
• Choosing what to read or watch. Dozens of countries, dozens of film industries, dozens of cuisines you have mostly never tried.
• Trip shortlists. For when the map is too big and you need somebody else to make the first cut.
• Settling the transcontinental argument. Generate Turkey and read the section above out loud. You will win.

Getting more out of the filters

• Type stan into Contains and you get Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The suffix means "place of" in Persian, so each name reads as the land of a people.
• Set Starts with to K and neither Korea shows up, because they are stored as North Korea and South Korea. Filters read the first character, not the idea.
• A couple of entries carry a second name in brackets, Myanmar (Burma) and Timor-Leste (East Timor), so Ends with reads the closing bracket for those. Use Contains instead.
• Fewer results than you asked for means the filter narrowed things below that number. Loosen it.

Questions people ask

Is Turkey in Europe or Asia?

Both. A slice of Turkey sits west of the Bosphorus, and that slice includes half of Istanbul. It is a transcontinental country, and so are five others.

Is Russia in Europe or Asia?

Both, and convention files it under Europe. Most of its territory is east of the Urals, and most of its population, its capital and its institutions are west of them.

How many countries are in Asia?

48, 49, 50 or 51, depending on how you treat the six transcontinental countries and whether Russia is included. The difference is entirely down to where the line is drawn. Nobody is being careless.

Is Cyprus in Asia?

Geographically it sits on the Asian side of the Mediterranean, far closer to the Syrian coast than to the Greek mainland. Politically it is a member of the European Union. Both answers are in circulation.

Is Asia really the biggest continent?

Yes, by land area and by population, and it is not close on either measure. Which is why any list of its countries feels small, and why picking one at random is a better way in than trying to hold the whole thing in your head.

References

1. United Nations member states
2. Standard country or area codes, UN M49
3. Philip Johan von Strahlenberg